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Workshop 2: Military Engagement in Mobilizing Societies in the Middle East

MRM 2013

 

 

Holger Albrecht

American University in Cairo, Egypt

[email protected]

Dina Bishara

George Washington University, USA

[email protected]

 

Abstract

This workshop will inquire into civil-military relations in the current revolutionary uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The core questions are: What does the military do in politics? Why and how do military apparatuses intervene in politics under conditions of social mass mobilization against authoritarian states? What are the effects of a militaries’ political engagement during social mass uprisings? And what are the prospects of democratic transition in an increasingly militarized region? The aim of this workshop is two-fold and papers will prove valuable for both scientific knowledge and contemporary, policy-oriented expertise: First, the collection of authors will contribute to a general understanding of the relationship between military apparatuses and MENA countries’ governments and societies. The workshop will therefore address a gap in the literature on civil-military relations in the region that appeared due to a severe lack of research since the early 1980s. The second aim is to come to a more specific understanding of the reasons, processes, and results of the current uprisings in the MENA region. We claim that an analysis of the role of military apparatuses and their form of involvement in the recent uprisings is imperative for a nuanced understanding of the phenomenon.

 

Description

 The recent uprisings in the MENA region brought two major lessons to the attention of researchers: (1) The politicization and mobilization of larger parts of the Arab public calls into question the widespread assumption that Arab societies are plagued by political apathy and a general unwillingness to engage in collective action. A perspective on the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Yemen—and smaller protest movements in Jordan, Morocco, and Oman—will thus have to take into consideration the presence of mobilizing societies. (2) Many political scientists have assumed a limited role of military apparatuses in politics. This perception has to be revised because we have witnessed a decisive role that military apparatuses played in the course of the ongoing uprisings. Thus, we detect the political engagement of military apparatuses at a much higher degree than anticipated on the basis of research in the last thirty years, which presumed the disengagement of militaries from politics.

One of the major promises of the workshop is to better understand variation in the course and results of the recent uprisings. The underlying question reads: Why do some uprisings—as, for instance, in Egypt and Tunisia—result in the fall of authoritarian incumbents, whereas other mass uprisings—as in Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen—are violently repressed? At this point in time—with events ongoing—we cannot identify a universally accountable pattern primarily because of the small number of differing cases at our disposal; but we argue that the dominant

narrative of events—pronouncing the degree of social pressure—will not provide a convincing answer. A preliminary estimate allows for the assumption that the number of people taking to the streets—in relation to the overall population—is similarly high in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. However, Tunisia and Egypt witnessed the ousting of their respective presidents, whereas Libya and Syria saw the violent suppression of people’s mobilization efforts.

Irrespective of the long-term developments in Syria, we have observed, by early 2012, that the latter two regimes have employed their coercive capacities towards mobilizing societies, while the two former did not. Military apparatuses form the coercive backbone in authoritarian regimes which incumbents would employ not only in times of war, but also in times of challenges originating in domestic politics. Since all MENA states could rely on significant coercive capacities (Bellin 2004) and “high-scope” military apparatuses (Levitsky& Way 2010: 59), we therefore assume that the nature of civil-military relations and the military’s calculus for political action determine the outcome of social uprisings rather than the extent of mobilization alone.

Triggered by the revolutionary uprisings, the several Middle Eastern armies have

captured a more visible role in politics, either through the direct take-over of political power or

through an engagement in violent conflicts. Social science research is only at the beginning to account for the imminence of the military’s role in contemporary Middle Eastern politics (Albrecht & Bishara 2011, Albrecht 2012, Bellin 2012), and this workshop will help to foster the emerging interest in the subject.

Previous social science literature on military apparatuses in the MENA region has

focused almost exclusively on two issues: (1) their role in state-building processes in the mid-20th century; and (2) their perceived “return to the barracks” since the 1980s. In the 1960s and 1970s, scholars have mainly analyzed the potential for militaries to play a positive role in the formative years of bureaucratic authoritarian regimes with a republican order, such as in Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen (cf., among many other works, Vatikiotis 1961, Halpern 1963, Abdel Malek 1968, Haddad 1973, Khuri & Obermeyer 1974, Khuri 1982). In traditional monarchies, such as in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, and the smaller Gulf states, military apparatuses have been organized along tribal configurations and kinship bonds to the respective ruling families which spared these regimes of military coups. Conceptually, this

literature has employed classical readings in political-science-oriented literature on civil-military relations which had, since the early 1960s, increasingly reached beyond a mere sociology of the corporate body of armed forces and inquired into the political role of militaries in the developing world (cf. for some modern classics, Janowitz 1960, Finer 1962, Stepan 1971, Nordlinger 1977, Perlmutter 1977). Since the early 1980s, researchers on the MENA states have moved on to describe a civilianization of bureaucratic authoritarian regimes in the context of their assumed consolidation. The apparent disengagement of militaries from direct policy-making—in conjunction with an increasing importance of the democratic-transition literature in comparative

 

politics—led scholars to largely disregard the political impact of military apparatuses on political institutions and policy making. Few exceptions notwithstanding (Brooks 1998, Kamrava 2000, Rubin & Keaney 2002, Cook 2007), the political role of militaries was virtually absent as a topic in academic inquiries. Scholarly attention was directed towards the establishment of vast parallel economies which offered opportunities for self-enrichment and the establishment of patronage networks. This “deal” (buying out the military from politics) was struck between incumbencies—perceived as civilian(ized)—and their respective military apparatuses in the1980s, and it was analyzed in a few empirically rich but conceptually limited studies (cf. Springborg 1987, Sayigh 1992, Sadowski 1993, Harb 2003, Droz-Vincent 2007).

The apparent need of further research on the topic is aggravated by the fact that the

theoretical literature on civil-military relations not particularly informative about military apparatuses’ reactions to mass protests. Structuralist explanations account for the general propensity of militaries to stage coups d’états (Finer 1962, Nordlinger 1977, Belkin & Schofer 2003) but fail to adequately explain military involvement during popular uprisings mainly due to the small number of empirical cases. Powell &Thyne (2011: 253f.) found that only 3.4 percent of all coups counted in the period 1950-2010 were triggered by popular protests. Neither are agency-centered approaches very far-reaching. While Barbara Geddes’ (1999: 125-129) suggestion remains parsimonious in that she explains coups d’états by military officers’ perception of rational interests, Terence Lee (2009) offers a game-theoretical model that assumes fissures within the military as the decisive factor explaining military intervention. However, his hypothesis—that militaries accept regime change when confronted by internal conflicts—is challenged by the cases of Tunisia and Egypt where homogeneous militaries have turned against their respective incumbents.

The workshop will attempt to offer a contribution to the debate in three broad realms:

First, the contributions should allow for a careful historical re-appraisal of the role of military in Middle Eastern politics; second, papers will account for the military’s role in the ongoing uprisings in the region; third, they will contribute to the theoretical literature on military apparatuses’ behavior during social mass uprisings and thus reach beyond the study of politics in the MENA region. The workshop directors will solicit papers on following themes and approaches:

1) Empirically rich country studies on cases that saw popular uprisings and an increased political engagement of military apparatuses; inspiring cases include, but are not limited to, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, and Bahrain;

2) Informed comparisons among cases within the MENA region and beyond, in particular highlighting singular thematic aspects of civil-military relations;

3) Cross-regional, and cross-time, comparisons which puts cases north and south of the Mediterranean against each other; we assume that the history of the demise of military rule in Turkey and the southern members of the European Union will inspire our knowledge about civil-military relations in the MENA region and facilitate predictions on future developments;

4) Theoretical contributions, from different methodological angles, with the aim of generalizing our knowledge about Middle Eastern civil-military relations during mass mobilization.

 

The workshop organizers hope to attract contributions from a variety of social science disciplines, in particular political science, the sociology of military apparatuses and civil-military relations, political economy, and conflict analysis. The workshop will also provide a forum to bring together researchers with different scholarly backgrounds in Europe, North America, and the MENA region. The workshop organizers will put particular emphasis on the identification of valuable empirical research conducted in the Middle East in order to foster this kind of research and make its results available to the international academic community. Paper proposals will be accepted in English (preferred) and French; though the language of communication during the workshop will be English. We welcome first-handed, up-to-date, original, and unpublished contributions of close-to-submission quality since it is our aim to publish some or all of the papers in an edited volume. While some authors have begun work on the subject along the lines suggested here, such a volume is, as of yet, lacking. The workshop will contribute to filling this research gap with its results.

 

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